Rome and Its Empire

From village to world power

According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BC by the twins Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a she-wolf. The real story is less dramatic but more impressive. A small town of farmers on the Tiber River in central Italy slowly conquered its neighbors. For about five centuries it was a republic, governed by elected officials and a Senate of leading families rather than a king.

Rome won wars by being stubborn, organized and disciplined. It defeated its great rival Carthage in North Africa in a series of brutal wars, destroying the city completely in 146 BC. In the same year it smashed the Greek city of Corinth. From then on, Rome was the master of the Mediterranean. The Romans began calling it mare nostrum, "our sea."

Rome absorbed Greek culture as eagerly as it conquered Greek lands. Wealthy Romans learned Greek, hired Greek tutors, and copied Greek art, architecture and philosophy. A Roman poet joked that captured Greece had taken its wild conqueror captive. So the "Greek" world of the previous chapter did not disappear under Rome. Rome adopted it and spread it further west.

From republic to empire

Ruling an empire with the machinery of a city-state did not work well. In the first century BC, ambitious generals with private armies fought a series of civil wars. Pompey the Great conquered the eastern Mediterranean, capturing Jerusalem in 63 BC. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (modern France) and then seized power in Rome itself, until senators stabbed him to death in 44 BC.

Out of the chaos came Caesar's adopted great-nephew, Octavian. He defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title Augustus (Octavian) ("revered one"). He was careful never to call himself king. But he was, in effect, the first emperor. He ruled until AD 14, and it was during his reign, according to Luke's Gospel, that Jesus was born.

The Roman world at its height (c. AD 117)

The Roman peace

Augustus ended a century of civil war. The two hundred years that followed are often called the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. Of course it was a peace imposed by force. Rome crushed rebellions brutally, and crucifixion was one of its tools of terror. But for ordinary travelers and traders the empire was safer and more connected than anything before it.

• Roads: Rome built more than 80,000 kilometers (50,000 miles) of paved roads, connecting cities from Britain to Syria.
• Sea lanes: The navy cleared the Mediterranean of pirates, so ships could carry grain, wine and passengers in relative safety.
• Language: Greek was spoken across the East and Latin across the West, so an educated traveler could be understood almost anywhere.
• Cities: Large cities such as Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus and Corinth were melting pots of peoples, ideas and religions.

Early Christian writers noticed how convenient all this was for spreading their message. Some later saw the hand of God in it. The church historian Eusebius of Caesarea argued that God had arranged for Christ to be born just when Augustus united the world, so that the gospel could travel freely. Whether or not one accepts that idea, it is true that the apostle Paul could not have made his journeys without Roman roads and Roman ships.

Roman religion: a public duty

To understand why Christians later clashed with Rome, you need to understand what "religion" meant to a Roman. It was not mainly about personal belief or private feelings. It was about keeping the gods happy so that the community would prosper. Rome had made a kind of contract with its gods. If the proper sacrifices and festivals were performed correctly, the gods would protect the city. Neglect them, and disaster would follow: plague, famine, defeat in war.

Religion was therefore a civic duty, a bit like paying taxes or obeying the law. What you privately thought about the gods mattered much less than whether you took part in the public rituals. Romans were generally tolerant of other people's gods. When they conquered a new region, they often simply added the local gods to the list. Mystery religions from the East, offering secret rituals and personal salvation (the cults of Isis, Mithras, Cybele and others), became popular across the empire.

Worshiping the emperor

After Augustus died, the Senate declared him a god. Later emperors were often worshiped too, especially in the eastern provinces, where people were used to treating kings as divine. Temples to "Rome and Augustus" sprang up in many cities. Offering a pinch of incense before the emperor's image became a test of loyalty. Most people saw it as a simple patriotic gesture, like saluting a flag.

The problem of the Jews, and then the Christians

One group stood out. The Jews worshiped only one God and refused to honor any others. Rome, which respected ancient traditions, generally made an exception for them. Their religion was old and tied to a particular nation, and they were allowed to pray for the emperor rather than to him.

Christians would not get this exception. Once Romans saw them as separate from Judaism, Christianity looked like a brand-new superstition, not an ancestral faith. Its members refused to honor the gods who protected the empire. They met privately, called each other "brother" and "sister," and spoke of eating "body and blood." To many Romans this made them atheists, cannibals and traitors. When disaster struck, Christians made convenient scapegoats. The story of that conflict is told in Persecution and Martyrs.

What Rome gave the church

Rome did not only persecute Christianity. It also shaped it deeply.

• Organization: The church later organized itself along the lines of the empire, with bishops in cities and senior bishops in provincial capitals. The word "Diocese" was originally a Roman administrative district.
• Law: Roman law, with its precise definitions and concern for rights and duties, shaped Western theology and "Canon law," the church's own legal system.
• Latin: Latin became the language of the Western church for more than a thousand years.
• The city of Rome: Because the empire's capital was the place where Peter and Paul were believed to have died, its bishop gained special prestige. This was the seed of the Papacy.

In the 300s the relationship turned upside down. A Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, became a Christian, and by the end of that century Christianity was the empire's official religion. The empire that had crucified Jesus would become the "Christian Roman Empire." That astonishing reversal is the subject of Era 3.